Whispers of the Marrow, page 1
Whispers of the Marrow
The Dark Strider Series, Volume 1
Faine Bird
Published by Ransom Publishing LLC, 2024.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
WHISPERS OF THE MARROW
First edition. July 11, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 Faine Bird.
ISBN: 979-8991135900
Written by Faine Bird.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
Sign up for Faine Bird's Mailing List
About the Author
About the Publisher
for the lives well-lived and long lost.
L.R., G.H., M.J., & Y.R.
CHAPTER ONE
Zee's heart pounded as she strained to hear any signs of life from her right. The faint breathing offered some reassurance, but she knew better than to trust it blindly. Her eyes remained closed. Determined not to fall for anymore tricks, she gritted her teeth and prepared for the worst. She slid a sweat-dampened palm across moist rumpled bed sheets in search of a warm body, stale air escaping her lungs once her fingertips graced the painful richness of Aryn’s hair. Aryn was here—it meant she was here.
Satisfied with the affirmation, Zee carefully pulled away before setting about checking the firmness of the mattress and pillows beneath her, prodding with both hands, testing, inching forward, gentle fingertips across white cotton sheets. It all felt normal enough.
Some mornings, she woke among disheveled, stinking bedsheets soaked in sweat, that previously soft white pillow bedecked with yellowish stains. Regardless, she carried on stretching out her arm, discovering anew the ridged section that often annoyed her, just adding to the many grievances preventing a good night’s rest. Plus, the mattress was too plush. All easy gripes when the issues which truly prevented sleep she preferred to shove aside and deny.
What is that lump there? God, I hate this bed.
Zee finally opened her bleary eyes to an unchanged bedroom illuminated by a pale blue beam from the streetlamp on the edge of the front lawn, casting its calming haze over the master suite. It seemed almost peaceful at this hour, the room’s many flaws and the marks and stains cast into invisibility until the new dawn broke, a fact for which she hated the breaking light. Even if only a single shaft of light came to invade the room’s grim atmosphere, in the semi-dark, Zee dared to imagine the walls coated in fresh beige paint, never acknowledging its reality.
These intolerable nights emptied Zee. Being prone to bouts of mania over the course of a year eased her into a practiced delirium, leading to what several perfectly inadequate therapists referred to as incessant paranoia...with insomnia...and a splash of addiction.
Speaking of addiction, Zee fumbled with the pill bottles scattered across her bedside table in search of her cellphone, eventually finding it and seeing that it was 3:26 a.m. Nowhere near time to get up and pretend to be productive.
Can’t I get a goddamn good night’s sleep for once?
Then it all came back to her.
The memory of cracking the shiny gold foil of the tequila sat fresh on her tongue, and before that, she recalled downing several chilled beers broken up by shots of bourbon, not to mention a pill medley that would put a vintage rock star to shame. A frightening concoction, but one to which Zee was ashamedly accustomed. She kept her feeble trembling fingers from reaching, seeking any container to deliver solutions to the myriad torments of her mind. Something to make her sleep. Something to kill the pain. Something to kill the pain of not sleeping. Almost amusing.
During this dismal, faint recalling of her day bathed in the gloominess of such a night, Zee realized her parched state; her mouth, throat, gullet all relentless in calling out for non-alcoholic hydration.
Raleigh, North Carolina, in the emergence of fall 2017 claimed the title warmest on record, and having forgone using the air conditioning, Zee’s sweat seemed to boil atop her skin. The bone drought of her throat traveled achingly through withered veins to rack her weighted limbs, and an attempt to moisten her dry lips with an even drier tongue yielded fruitless results.
She scanned the floor beside her using faint light coming through the curtains, looking for the wide-mouth mason jar that usually held water for such an occasion—a regular one at that—not at all shocked to find it spilled over onto the relatively clean hardwood floor.
Quite a few beer bottles lay down there too, knocked from the bedside table. She needed to tidy the place. Later though. Everything later.
She peered at her closed bedroom door, weighing the pros and cons of venturing to the kitchen to quench her thirst, but alas, the cons reigned victorious; Zee somehow simultaneously too drunk and too hungover to move. So, suffer she would.
Another few hours’ sleep, she thought, shoving the bedding lower to cool herself off. Maybe I should go turn on the AC.
She turned over then, sinking deeper into the mattress. It was all she could do. Walking bore a risk. Walking meant more alcohol.
Dr. LaConte warned her over and over again about the dangers of using narcotics and alcohol before bed (against the dangers of using them any time really) insisting they only aggravated her sleep cycle further; a fact to which Zee arguably agreed. But he didn’t understand what it meant to go sleepless for days on end. Not the ‘I’m gonna pull an all-nighter to pass exams’ sleepless, but the ‘I don’t know if I’m alive’ sleepless. The ‘I’m taking another fucking pill’ sleepless.
He would never understand that when the demons of the night came creeping from the corners of that room to force wide her eyes again, robbing her of pleasant dreams, the pills were sometimes her lone saviors, and not the aggressors Dr. LaConte claimed kept her awake in the first place.
Dr. LaConte was a nice enough guy, but he was wrong. “They’re certainly not doing you any favors,” he had said, yet when Zee lay restless, her little round, orange friends labeled P and 4 lulled her back to sleep. If what the doctor said proved true, then the whole thing was a trap, a cycle where she thrived.
Of course, Dr. LaConte’s aversion to narcotics made it impossible for her to swindle any useful prescriptions from him, a moot point given that Zee operated on far more engaging substances provided by a more than capable connect.
Zee bit her lip thinking about just how fucking good those substances felt. She read somewhere that cellphone notifications produced a dopamine effect and she called bullshit. Because while she didn’t possess the twenty-first-century urge to Google the latest celebrity gossip, or watch the next YouTube sensation, or take advice from the latest influencer, she thoroughly enjoyed snorting Pickle off the dash of her black 1968 Pontiac Firebird. She lacked any desire to switch on the zombie box to entertain another reality television show championing perpetual mindlessness via a series of anticlimactic events, or to listen to another politician’s lies, coercing the masses to abide by the next threat to existence, but she had never turned down—nor would she ever pass up—the promise of a whiskey-soaked orgasm.
Zee shifted in the bed, turning over again. It felt even more uncomfortable now. No sleep then. It was done.
And she was out of pills. So, she sat up, pondering again. Could I go for water now?
No. Not yet. She’d be unsteady on her feet and anyway, it would wake Aryn. More excuses not to move since she still felt wretched anyway.
Instead, Zee retrieved an ink pen and leather-bound journal from her bedside table drawer.
Another piece of sound advice set forth by her well-intentioned therapist was to maintain a dream journal, and with the increasingly terrifying nature of her nighttime reverie, she found it a rather illuminating practice. And somehow, it made the infiltrating light that entered the bedroom less grating, giving it a valid purpose.
Removing the pen’s chewed cap, Zee tapped the heavily gnawed writing instrument against the empty page while her other hand frenetically fiddled with the thin silver chain around her neck as if wishing to strangle herself. Writing down that first word was always the most difficult, even after replaying those vivid dreams. Somehow, the repeated twisting of the necklace was essential to freeing pent-up thoughts, squeezing the words upwards from her throat to her brain.
She was never partial to jewelry, finding anything beyond studded earrings a bother, yet the small, silver necklace accompanied by its tiny cardinal charm suited her. It had been a birthday gift from her mother this year, technically one month after her actual birthdate, and the first gift she had received from the woman in nearly seven years.
It had arrived by mail on an ordinary Saturday, and with it came Zee’s hope for an end to a stalemate she barely understood. Moments after opening the small package, the shrinking voice in her heart that often whispered of reconciliation and acceptance began to sing, and she nervously picked up the phone to call Beverly Evelyn Talbit. Zee had learned early in life that her mother valued bona fide southern manners over pretty much anything else. And hopeful to earn some daughter points her older sister readily gained, Zee had crafted a perfectly worded statement of gratitude—as was the proper thing to do, adding to and altering the sequence of its elements until she was finally content with the script.
As the ringing set in, she found herself having the hypothetical conversation with the woman who had given birth to her. Inquiring about the book club Beverly hosted every Thursday was always a safe topic, giving Beverly the chance to fill her in on irrelevant facts in which Zee had no interest whatsoever. But still, it lessened the tension, easing the passage of time until goodbye would become acceptable. Then, she would exhale pure relief from her lungs.
There, done it. Don’t need to speak to Ma again for a while. You did well, Zee.
More ringing came. Her guts had squirmed. More ringing. She pondered asking how things were down at the church, though that particular line of questioning could also yield disastrous results. Talbit Harvest was a testament to the fact, so a no-go. Then someone answered. Sadly, all of Zee’s small talk preparation was for naught. It seemed Beverly couldn’t be bothered to even answer the phone or return the call any subsequent day. And her mother never took to texting.
Instead, Zee was forced to endure an awkward fifteen-minute discussion with her mother’s latest boyfriend David, rambling at great length about car maintenance. She learned a few things: the importance of correct tire pressures, the need to select the right viscosity of motor oil for the type of vehicle, for its age and for the climate in which it operated. It was like some sort of secret language; if you did not speak motor vehicle, communications stalled just like any neglected car. She was unable to imagine that any conversation might occur between the two of them, between her mother and David; they were surely as mismatched a couple as ever there was. She reasoned there wouldn’t be a lot of choice in men when a woman reached Beverly’s age, regardless of her timeless beauty. She must have made do.
A nice enough guy though, she supposed, even if deathly boring.
Endless minutes ticked by before images from Zee’s latest dream took form once again, allowing words to frantically spill onto the journal’s clean page with its folded corner to keep as a marker, following on from the earlier scribbles and improvised sketches of various sized cubes, which all seemed to be a part of the buildup.
Once the words stopped pouring free, Zee found the resulting incohesive bluster a stark reminder of her ever-wavering sanity. She read the entry repeatedly, trying to decipher it until the words began to blur, a headache ensuing. Thankfully, the painful throbbing caused sleep to beckon her once more. Replacing the freshly gnawed cap, she tossed the journal and pen back into the drawer, checking again the time on the cellphone display, then settling back under the covers.
It read 3:26 a.m., efficiently shattering any hope of a gentle slumber.
“That can’t be right,” Zee said aloud. Surely, it had been several minutes since she’d checked it last, yet there it was in large, white digital lettering. Time was standing still, quite literally.
3:26 a.m. It must be frozen. A glitch. Occam’s razor, maybe?
She once prided herself on being a promising physics student, and indulging in the philosophical classics had once been fun. Cellphones were known to stop working all the time, suffering more than occasional glitches. In fact, it was more normal for them to fail these days based on the redundancy of new versions being introduced every year, a marketing ploy designed to suck in the majority who seemed unable to function without the latest piece of tech.
The more she sought the simplest of explanations, the more frantic grew her attempts to reset or shut down the device. But it was to no avail, the sleek display still refusing to respond.
That taunting time just would not change. 3:26 a.m.
“Piece a shit!” Zee growled, launching the offending device at the wall, not at all concerned about waking the bedroom’s other occupant now.
Yet no sound came from the impact, the sound waves seemingly lost in the vacuum of space, cushioned by some invisible barrier.
And no longer could she hear Aryn’s rhythmic breathing either.
When had it stopped? How had she not noticed?
In this new darkness of her own persistence, void of sound and logic, Zee closed her eyes again, sliding the same hand she’d used earlier over the ocean-sized bed space. She could no longer feel the silky strands of her lover’s hair. Aryn wasn’t there.
She had been tricked again, now searching her increasingly torpid mind for fragments and slivers of any truths, sadly bringing to mind that Aryn had moved out nearly a year ago.
Zee was very much alone.
Her eyes opened to a familiar semi-darkness, tracing the static shadows on the walls leading to the closed bedroom door, now realizing that it, too, was wrong.
Once Zee’s life had taken an abrupt turn for the worst, she had developed a nighttime ritual—a compulsive response, Dr. LaConte called it—which hinged upon her opening every door of her surroundings before she could fall asleep again, and for Zee, it worked usually. Her own reality check.
Last month she had passed out drunk in a McDonald’s drive-thru, and not fifteen minutes later, she awoke to a teenage employee reeking of weed hovering at her side. She had simply handed him twenty bucks in response for his troubles, and he took the cash without hesitation. He only asked why her car doors were open before shutting them for her, careful not to trap her jacket or anything else in shutting them. Perhaps too careful, too attentive and interested. Her response was to peel away, sans late-night French fries, sans those twenty bucks.
Zee was dismayed at this in-between, this new reality where from behind the closed door, low voices came crawling to life. Panic gripped her, sending a flurry of thoughts scattering across the front of her mind, her pulse quickening, the fine hairs of her forearms rearing up, forcing the skin beneath them to tighten and squeal like untended brakes.
Her terror only seemed to drive these otherworldly proponents, resulting in an amplification of their voices and their songs beyond the barrier. She could only press her palms against her ears to keep them out. Not completely but imagining her hands as some sort of acoustic barrier, suppressing their invasive cacophony.
The closed door moved closer toward her, floating through the air like a looming wooden phantom. The pounding in Zee’s chest reverberated in her ears, more so than the shouts from beyond the door, and she screamed, “Jesus fucking Christ! Stop! Stop this now!”
They silenced on her command, the door hovering only an arm’s length away from her bedside, waiting to finally end the night’s game they had all been playing.
What a fucking game it was too! Zee took a steely breath and reached for the handle, but before trembling fingers touched rusted brass, that door swung open, sending billowing flames expelling from its depths, stopping within an inch of her nose.
Zee jerked away like a scalded animal and pressed her back against the headboard, hands placed at either side of her on the bed, supporting her frozen body.
This savage inferno wasn’t warm or healing. It felt of hell or something close to it—of something seductive and primal, majestic in its own way and so entrancing in every other. When the voices returned, Zee failed to notice as she became enraptured by the orangish-yellows. The orchestra of mangled souls bellowed out, more persistent, clearer than they had ever been:
“Sarah Murdoch! Sarah Murdoch! Sarah Murdoch!”
The dancing flames called upon something deep and forgotten within her, triggering the past. She leaned closer to the genesis of its seduction, not at all aware of the tentacled shadows slowly shifting down the wall behind her, extending their spindly elongated fingers toward her.
The persistent gloom, the source of all her sorrows, slipped over her wrists and neck, restraining her within its cold clutches before she could enter the desperate warmth, her eyes fluttering shut as she fainted backwards into the darkness.
